


You Can't Take Them With You When You're Dead

by American_Apparently_Not



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Death, Death, Emotional Hurt, Everybody Dies, Family Loss, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Why Did I Write This?, so much hurt, why did i do this to myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29448201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/American_Apparently_Not/pseuds/American_Apparently_Not
Summary: Nile never thought she'd be alone again. Far from that lonely, fatherless child, she'd grown used to the camaraderie, company and joy that came with being part of her immortal family, and forgot what it was ever like to be alone.Until she started losing them, too.
Kudos: 5





	You Can't Take Them With You When You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Text and plot are my own work, characters are not my property.  
> Title from 'Born Alone Die Alone' on the Old Guard Soundtrack

Nile never thought she'd be alone again. Far from that lonely, fatherless child, she'd grown used to the camaraderie, company and joy that came with being part of her immortal family, and forgot what it was ever like to be alone.

Until she started losing them, too.

It wasn't that she never thought about mortality - with Andy not healing almost from the moment they met, it was impossible to forget. It was just that she sometimes took what they had for granted, only to be slapped with reality any time she noticed a new infirmity in the boss.

Roughly sixty-two years, three months and nineteen days after the fierce warrior had pistol-whipped Nile in Afghanistan, Andromache the Scythian died for the final time. Refusing to just lie in bed and accept her looming end, she had spent her last hours on horseback. Then, exhausted, but with more life in her elderly bones than Nile had seen in months, Andy fell asleep in her armchair and never woke up.

That was also the last night that Nile dreamed of Qunyh.

* * *

The loss of Qunyh was a strange one. In a way, she had been lost to Nicky and Joe for centuries - while none of them acknowledged it, it was clear Andy had given up hope on finding Quynh years ago, hoping instead that her love was dead for real and no longer suffering - and Nile had never even met her. Yet she still felt a tremendous sense of sorrow for the death of this unknown figure, this woman whose torment she had shared every night for six decades. This phantom-like grief filled the voids in crowded and near-empty rooms, thickening the air, and at times threatening to choke Nile with its intensity.

The loss of Andy, on the other hand, was very much real, and could not be put into words. For days, Nile sat with Nicky and Joe in their safehouse, almost numb. Then their grief turned to rage, and they spent several weeks planning huge revenge missions against anyone they could find before common sense broke through and told them not to destroy everything their sister had worked for within a month of her passing. As Joe and Nicky fell apart, Nile assumed the role of leader, forcing them to eat, shower and sleep. She saw the pain in their eyes as they each watched grief destroy the other, and used this, even if they hated her for it.

Slowly but surely, Nile pieced the two men back together. Dealing with her own sense of loss took a back seat as she helped them through it, channeling the importance their late leader had always placed on the family. Booker had returned for Andy's final days at Nile's request, but had left the day after she died to complete his exile. Morbidly, Nile's guess was he couldn't look Nicky and Joe in the eye while they were experiencing the same kind of grief he had betrayed them for. How he dealt with his grief she would never know.

Eventually, though, he had returned to them, and the Guard had become a seamless unit once more. While there would always be an Andy-sized hole in their hearts, their ranks and formations were as tight as ever.

* * *

Less than four hundred years later, they were on a mission in Belize when Booker had taken a bullet meant for Nicky to the stomach. Having dispatched the gunman, the other three immortals had gathered around their wounded friend. When the pool of blood had kept growing with no sign of stopping, they knew it was the end. Booker wasn't sad or angry. He had actually lived the last three hundred years, not just survived as he had the previous three, but he was still ready to go. The knowledge that he would be reunited with his wife and children after so long sustained Nile, Nicky and Joe while they mourned their brother.

This time, perhaps because they had all had roughly equitable time with their lost one, perhaps because they'd done this before, their grief was more equal, more shared. No one was put on the back burner, no one suffered in silence.

Nile was, however, acutely aware of how fragile this loss had made Nicky and Joe feel. They had already lived hundreds of lives, seen each other die dozens of times, and always feared that this time would be final. But the death of Booker had clearly put some already-defined fears into high resolution. The two of them were far older than their brother; both were approaching a millenia and a half. And while age clearly didn't make a difference to your immortality - Lykon and Booker were both proof of that - it didn't seem the worst guide to go off of. What had previously been anguished faces while waiting for the other to heal became full-on grief, expecting every time to be the last. But they lived on, and the trio was still going strong five hundred years later, with another trio of young ones to look after.

* * *

Selfishly, Nile didn't want Nicky and Joe to ever die. As they'd lost each member of their family - of the five that joined them since Booker died, two had already passed on - she'd grown more and more scared about the inevitable time when they, too, would leave her. They kept her grounded, reminded her of the beginnings of her immortal life when she still felt human. Though she hadn't reached Booker or Andy levels of apathy (largely thanks to the levity of her two companions), it was impossible to live this long and not feel that you had somewhat lost your original self. Joe and Nicky had helped, taught, annoyed, amused, comforted and loved her for centuries. She felt more youthful around them, not forced to be the adult or leader for the youngsters (a purely relative term, as the eldest was nearly three hundred).

So she didn't want them to die. If it hadn't been for her father's death in her long-ago first life and seeing what that had done to her mother, Nile might have even wished to die before them, so that she didn't have to lose anyone else. But she wasn't that cruel. She knew they were tired. Having run missions for almost 1500 years, lost their original immortal siblings and now lost two of the "children", they were exhausted. She knew losing her, too, would destroy them. And she also knew that they would welcome peace with open arms, if it were not for the worry of leaving the other behind.

As such, it was with mixed emotions as she and the others laid the two to rest on the eve of her eleven hundredth birthday. Of course she was devastated, once again wrung with a loss that was simultaneously familiar and gut-punchingly new. But her first emotion, upon having found the two that morning, curled up in bed together, not breathing, was joy. Joy that Joe's fears were unfounded, that Nicky had been right in his assertion that they had been reborn together, so they would die together. Joy that neither had to feel the agony of losing the other. If Nile had to shoulder a little more pain and grief to spare them from such a burden, she would gladly do so. And there was also joy that they would at last know peace. Maybe, if the idea of Heaven she shared with Nicky was real, they would see Andy again, and Quynh, the sister they had lost before her time. They could reunite with Booker and meet Lykon for the first time. Just as these thoughts had comforted them after their French brother died, so they comforted her as she mourned the last of the original Old Guard.

* * *

The children, which Nile never stopped calling them, if only to annoy, helped her grieve this time. They too had loved Nicky and Joe, as their mentors and the longest-living people they'd ever met. They had been told about those who came before, but as Joe and Nicky's two thousand years blew their minds, they had difficulty comprehending Andy's six and a half. They were young and fresh and lively, something Nile remembered being, but rarely seemed to muster the energy for, nowadays. Oh, she could still fight with the best of them; she had trained the youngest two in almost everything they knew. However, the years weighed down on her. They sat heavily on her shoulders as she balanced the world, her team, and their security up there too.

But she wasn't ready to go yet. Just as the memories of her father's death had stopped Nile preceding Joe and Nicky, now they stopped her leaving her team. They needed her - she had to show them how to navigate this life; welcome a new one when they arrived; escape a bad situation. She had a purpose. And until that purpose was fulfilled, it would not be her time. So Nile did not allow herself to wallow in exhaustion, but gained a new lease of life with every hundredth year she celebrated. The world shifted again and again, until it was completely unrecognisable from the place of her youth. When she thought of any potential new ones joining their family, she worried they'd live long enough to be killed by global warming or the Sun encompassing the Earth. With no precedent, she had no idea whether these were events one could be reborn from. She often didn't think of that, though, preferring to live in the movement. That way she took every day at it came, and knew she'd be around as long as her team needed her.

Nile had always wanted to go out in battle. Like Booker, like her dad, like that scared little girl just under two thousand years ago whose death certificate read 'KIA'. So it was with pride that she continued to serve with her team even after a dislocated shoulder proved she was no longer healing. Then, in 3974 AD, it was with pride that she fell, a knife in her neck oddly old-fashioned and reminiscent of her first death. As she heard the scramble of her team, she closed her eyes, squeezed a hand that made its way into hers, and drifted away into the light.


End file.
